Why do we have to die?

This seemed appropriate after my last post. Rest in peace, Dorothy!

As long as Homo sapiens have existed on Earth, they have been obsessed with death. Death is inevitable for all living creatures, and this is a fact of life that is impossible to escape.

Death is defined as a cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living creature. In a human it usually means that the heart stops and brain activity ceases. Death can result from a devastating injury, poison, heart failure, excessive bleeding, or natural causes, which could result from old age, starvation, dehydration, disease, or trauma. A person can also die from murder or suicide.

Over the ages, death has been dealt with in many ways, some of which are weird. It was somewhere in early man's evolution that humans began to bury or burn their dead rather than leaving the bodies to be ravaged by wild beasts. Soon after that, some sort of ceremony accompanied the burial, and this has evolved into a well-defined funeral industry. One thing an undertaker doesn't have to worry about is a absence of business.

In modern times, death has to be judged by defined clinical conditions. Before instruments capable of measuring brain activity were devised the criteria most adhered to involved cessation of heart pumping and breath. Many of these ideas have been incorporated into a legal definition of death, which is paramount to a death certificate being issued.

The reason why we die is very complicated. I'm talking about death by natural causes here, not death by accident or murder. The main reason that we age and then die is that our organs wear out and stop functioning. This obsolesce is programmed into our DNA, which dictate that cells can only reproduce so many times before they die. Also, DNA mutations often cause death. This could be from radiation damage (we are constantly subjected to radiation from the Earth and space), both natural and manmade. It can also be caused by chemical contamination and disease. The bottom line is that we evolved from species that die and therefore death is part of our essence.

There have been many attempts to cheat death, but all of them have failed. The reason is easy to understand. It's very hard to change our genetic makeup. We are what we are, and the only thing that changes us is evolution.
The question then becomes: could we force an evolutionary change that would make us immortal? That's a question that many have asked but none have solved. However, there have been many attempts to find a way to extend life, but this has become an ethical problem and even a religious one. The main reason is that there is a fear that the technology to prolong life would be for the wealthy few. That's where the ethics question comes in. Many religions are against life extension because it's not natural.

There are many ideas out there on how to live longer, and they usually involve healthy living styles such as eating properly and exercising. However, there are no guarantees because long life is often a genetic trait. The good news is that there are many new pharmaceutical drugs that can help overcome killer diseases like cardio vascular disease, diabetes and cancer, which are the main causes of natural death.

As you might imagine there are a plethora of aging theories, but none of them are practical or actually work to provide a way to cheat death. It seems that the only way is good living and a healthy lifestyle.

So, could we ever be made immortal? The answer is probably, but it will take some time to work out the genetic manipulations that would be required to do it. For now, the only way to cheat death is to play the game of Life.

Thanks for reading.